Cohen fellowship in legal bibliography and history awarded

The Harvard Law School Library announced that its inaugural Morris Cohen Fellowship in American Legal Bibliography and History will go to Sara Mayeux, who is pursuing a joint J.D. and Ph.D. in history from Stanford University.

Mayeux will be conducting research in the HLS library manuscript collections for her project, “A Cultural History of the Criminal Defense Attorney, 1900-1930.” The project explores perceptions of the criminal defense bar both among the general public and the legal elite in the first decades of the 20th century—when the American legal profession became more specialized and stratified, the national drama of Prohibition fueled popular fears about crime, and progressive thinkers proposed sweeping legal reforms.

The fellowship was created in honor of Morris L. Cohen, who was a librarian at HLS from 1971 until 1981 and was one of the country’s leading authorities in legal research and bibliography. Cohen’s Bibliography of Early American Law (1998) is the definitive work on the topic. Author of more than a dozen books, he is currently an emeritus professor of law at Yale Law School.